


He's Mummy first and Newt when they let him

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Newt's creatures are a tad possessive and maybe it's an issue, implied (non-permanent) character death, implied brainwashing, up to you how you want to read this but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 10:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21159992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Newt lives for his creatures.





	He's Mummy first and Newt when they let him

See, the thing about Newt. The thing about Newt is that he lives for his creatures. Do you understand?

He starts with just a couple. He never really means to bring them with him, but they’re wounded, perhaps. He patches them up, best he can, and tries to let them go because wild creatures should stay wild, shouldn’t they? (after all, look at his dragons, look at his hippogriffs, look at the creatures wizards sent to war and look at the way they died. no, creatures don’t belong with people, Newt is certain of this) So he does for the creature - a dobhar chu, let’s say, an Irish otter both larger and more fish-like than the usual non-magical fare - Newt does for the dobhar chu as best he can and he takes it to the river and lets it go. It dives straight for the water and doesn’t look back and this is how it’s meant to be.

Newt turns to leave and there’s a tail wrapped around his ankle.

He looks down; the dobhar chu looks up. He points at the water; the dobhar chu obligingly pulls him into it. He coughs, chokes, splutters his way back to the bank; the dobhar chu hops out and waits for him with a tilted head and a lolling grin.

It takes Newt five days, in the end, before the creature is comfortable enough to leave him be on the river bank while it swims upstream to explore. He hesitates, because he _knows_ the only reason it feels safe enough to leave him is because he’s convinced it he won’t run away, but - but wild creatures don’t belong with people.

He apparates out and it feels like abandonment and guilt.

But then, then there’s a runespoor with its middle head barely still attached; Newt wraps it in bandages and fashions a cone to keep the middle head safe, and while he’s distracted the other two wind around his shoulders and refuse to let go.

There’s a kneazle, and it _wants_ people, it’s used to people, it’s been around people all its life until its owner died and its owner’s son threw it out on the street.

There’s a niffler, and Newt tries to set it free every week for a month before he admits defeat and gives it a home with him. “Sometimes I think you get in trouble on purpose,” he tells it, arms crossed and frowning as he looms over it. The niffler hiccups, drunk on gold and giddy with it. “There are other ways to get my attention, you know. You don’t have to rob a bank every time you want me.” It waddles slowly towards him and collapses, content, on his shoes. It doesn’t even protest when Newt tickles it into giving up it’s mountain of treasure; it got what it wanted. It’s happy.

Newt’s started building habitats for them in his case. Basic, for now, but he’s learning and inventing (he makes more mistakes than successes and twice now he’s collapsed the dimension-pocket while he was still inside, twice now he should have died but didn’t and he keeps on going because his creatures need him to) and he’ll make them better, just give him time. He travels, taking his case and his creatures with him and he’s never sure where he’ll end up or what draws him to a place but he always seems to get there in the end.

(he rescues the bowtruckles from a forest fire and he hasn’t the time to do anything but curl around them and shield them from the flames and it hurts, it hurts it hurts it _hurts_ but when it’s done it’s done and the bowtruckles fuss over their new tree and knit back his broken bark with careful fingers and gentle squeaks)

Sometimes, he thinks he’d like to stay somewhere for longer than he does, but he never seems to. Sometimes he meets people who he thinks could be friends but they never last long. He must be annoying, he thinks. He turns the cup of tea in his hands and ignores how cold its grown and wonders what he did this time to drive this friend away. He waits another hour before he gives up and leaves it undrunk on the table; he takes the next train out of town and there’s no one left behind to miss him when he goes.

(the fwooper sensed him passing and sang to him, calling and calling until she drove him mad, calling and calling again until he found her and unlocked her cage and set her free. his eyes shone fever bright and the runespoor clucked over his shoulder and hissed that she broke him; she settled herself smugly into his life and sang backwards to remake him again)

“I don’t want to do this,” Newt says once, low and horrified. He hovers on the edge of the doorway and hopes with every fibre of his being that the men inside will put down their wands and prove him wrong. His own wand feels alien and deadly in his hand. “Please,” he whispers. “Please, I don’t want to do this.”

They crack the whip forwards in a blaze of fire and the thunderbird screams in agony but still withholds the rain; Newt closes his eyes and brings up his wand and when he opens them again the men are dead and the thunderbird wraps a wing around him to pull him close and keep him there. Newt runs his fingers over the new scars on his side and doesn’t question anymore how fast they heal.

(it takes months for the nundu to make him immune to her poison, months of patience as he twists and sweats and dies each night in fire, and the marmite chides her for being too rough but it’s worth it each morning when he wakes up that little bit stronger and that little bit closer to being hers)

“I won’t stay,” Newt warns them in New York. He knows better now than to believe he drives people away, knows better now than to think he has a choice. “You can’t make me stay.”

“Then let us come with you,” they say.

The swooping evil stirs restlessly under his sleeve; it’s clamped around his wrist like a manacle and it won’t take kindly to well-meaning aurors who try to set him free.

“No,” Newt says, to his creatures, to his friends, to something that could have been so much more than friendship - “No, I’m sorry, I can’t,” he says, and apparates out of New York and doesn’t look back. (<strike>it feels like abandonment and guilt</strike>)

In his case, his creatures resettle from their watchful wariness. Newt is tracked by one of Grindelwald’s followers somewhere just North of Philadephia and the graphorns grumble but take their turn in reviving him again when he dies; the erumpet is far more gleeful when she deals with the follower that killed him.

It’s the fwooper though that shifts restlessly on its branch and thinks again of the way Newt keeps dreaming of New York, of the people and the could have beens he left behind. She adds a few more notes to the song she’s composing and trills impatiently for Mummy to come back into the case, and do you see, now, do you understand?

Newt lives for his creatures. Just for his creatures. He’s Mummy first and Newt when they let him and one day, he thinks, Mummy is all he’ll be.

Do you see?


End file.
